Osteoporosis & Arthritis? 3 Safe Exercise Tips You NEED!

If somebody has osteoarthritis, the general advice is to not have a lot of impact when you're exercising. For example, if someone has an arthritic knee, they're not going to want to run and jump because that's going to cause a flare up of the joint. So lower impact type of activities, if you have arthritis, such as swimming or biking or exercises while you're lying down, are generally what we prescribe. However, if someone has osteoporosis, we prescribe the opposite. We want weight bearing. We want to load that spine. We want to load that joint. So what does someone do if they have both osteoarthritis and osteoporosis? Hello, everyone. Welcome to the channel. Ed DeBoot, physical therapist from Integrated Physical Therapy in Bellingham, Washington. Let's first give a quick definition of osteoarthritis versus osteoporosis, just so that we're all on the same page. Osteoarthritis is a degenerative condition where the cartilage that cushions the ends of the bones wear out, leading to pain, stiffness, and inflammation. Osteoporosis, on the other hand, is a condition marked by weakening of the bone and bone can become brittle, prone to fractures due to loss of bone mass density, and you have to be particularly careful because you definitely do not want to fall if you have osteoporosis. The first thing to keep in mind is that whether you have osteoarthritis or osteoporosis, that it is a lifelong condition that we need to learn how to manage, and it's not something that's just a short term fix. Now, can medications help? Of course. Medications can help build new bone mass density for osteoporosis. If someone has an inflamed joint, we've all probably taken an Advil or an anti-inflammatory and that's helped, and that's going to be a discussion between you and your doctor. In this video, and as a physical therapist, I'm going to more so address the lifestyle issues and how we can modify our exercise program and try to accomplish both, not flare up the arthritic joint, as well as trying to work on building new bone mass density. Exercise tip number one, establish a walking program, and your goal should be trying to walk every single day and track the number of steps that you do. I cannot overstate the importance of the benefit of a daily walking program. If you look at the literature, ideally, if we can all hit 7,500 steps or more a day would be ideal, but I have clients that do 10,000, 12,000 steps a day, and I have others that are in the 2,000 to 3,000 step a day, but if we don't measure something, we don't manage it, so it's critical that you get yourself some sort of organization. It could be an old school calendar. It could be something on your phone, but I do recommend writing it down and actually tracking your steps on a daily basis. Now, if someone has an arthritic flare up, you may have to walk with a cane or a walking stick or you may have to use a knee brace or even a back brace, but the idea is that you want to try to walk because it is a fairly low impact type of exercise compared to running or jogging or jumping, so it's going to be fairly easy on your joints, and it does help to maintain bone mass density. Now, it's not enough impact to build new bone, but studies have shown that walking on a regular basis can at least help to maintain the bone mass density that you have. Tip number two, at least two times a week, preferably three, upper and lower body strengthening exercises. Getting stronger is critical for both osteoarthritis and osteoporosis. In the osteoarthritic patient, when we get stronger with the muscles around the joint, it takes the pressure off of that joint because remember, we've got a loss of cartilage in there and we might even have bone on bone, which is creating a lot of pain, but if we get the muscles around it stronger, it takes some of the pressure off of the joint. Osteoporosis helps build bone mass density because as we are lifting weights with our upper body, the muscle attaches to the tendon, which attaches to the bone, so as that signaling continues and as we continue to lift heavier and heavier weights, the tendon, as it attaches to the bone, must get stronger, so it creates new bone in that interface, and so that's how weight training helps to improve bone mass density in osteoporosis clients. Now, if you're already working out, that's great. Continue to do that, but if not, there are resources out there. I believe so much in strengthening. I wrote a book, 10-Minute Strength Exercises for Seniors. I'll put a link down below to the book, but basically, there's 40 different exercises in here that you can start at home, clear instructions, how to make the exercise harder, as well as how to make the exercise easier. Now, the intensity of the weight training is going to differ based upon how you're feeling, and this is where the arthritis becomes a limiting factor because remember, we want to try to lift as, quote-unquote, heavy as we can to stimulate as much bone growth through compression of the joint, as well as tension on the muscle, but for example, if I have an arthritic knee, doing a lot of weighted, heavy squats might not be a good idea initially because that's going to flare up my knee. Getting into the pool is also a good idea. It's a great way to get exercise without the stress on the joints. I recommend going back to your calendar or wherever you're taking notes and writing down how many steps you're walking each day. Literally schedule in the two days a week that you're going to work on upper body and lower body strengthening because then you're more likely to follow through with it. So what if it's an upper body strengthening day and you just flared up your shoulder by working in the yard yesterday? The idea is to not skip your workout. You're going to continue to strength train, but you're going to make it a lot easier, which might mean less repetitions, less weight. You may have to focus a little bit more on stretching for a day or two just until that joint settles down a little bit. The nice thing about arthritic flare ups is that they do wax and wane, but we need to be aggressive in how we treat the arthritic joint and that leads us right into tip number three. Tip number three, we have to be aggressive and proactive with our arthritic joints because as we know, arthritic joints are the limiting factor in our ability to get stronger. And remember the stronger we get, the better we function with both osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. So the first stop in making sure that you're taking care of your arthritis is actually the kitchen. Processed food, alcohol, sugar, all of those unfortunately increase inflammation, joint pain and can make an arthritic flare up worse. Now I'm not talking about never having alcohol or sugar or processed foods, but what I do recommend is putting some bumpers on it will help to keep your body less inflamed. At 56 and I've been active my whole life, I've had my fair share of injuries, dislocations, fractures. What I've found to help treat my arthritis is red light therapy and the unit that I love is a unit from Prungo and I'll tell you why I love it so much. Let's take a look at the literature first. Now the official name for red light therapy is photobiomodulation and here is a comprehensive review of all the studies that are out there for red light therapy and osteoarthritis. And it was done by the International Journal of Molecular Sciences last year. And in summary, red light therapy shows great promise as an effective and non-invasive treatment for arthritis. With continued research and development, red light therapy has the potential to become a widely adopted and beneficial treatment option for arthritic patients. In addition to arthritis, red light therapy has also been shown to be effective in wound healing and tissue repair, helps to improve cognitive function, hair growth, improves sleep, reduces inflammation, and helps with skin health and anti-aging effects. Now you may or may not have heard about red light therapy or laser therapy. Red light is part of the natural light spectrum from the sun. Sunlight is made up of basically three different types of light including visible light, ultraviolet light, and infrared light. So when it comes to arthritis, how does red light even work? Red light penetrates deeper into the skin than other colors, helping to stimulate cells, improves circulation. Specifically for arthritis, it helps to reduce pain and stiffness. It improves joint flexibility and function by improving blood flow and promoting healing of the damaged tissue, making it easier to move around without as much pain. The unit Elizabeth and I almost fight over on a daily basis is called the Prungo. Let me show you how it works. The unit's nice and small and portable, and it's very adaptable to multiple parts of our body. What's nice about this is it's a charging case. You just plug it in right through here, put this into your USB port. Within a few hours, the case is fully charged. Let's open it up. And on the inside, what you'll see is there are three individual little units. And the nice thing about each one of these units is that there's three different settings on it. A mild, a mid, and a strong. For arthritic pain, I definitely recommend the strong. Once you get on the one that you want, you press the button again, and it starts to emit the red light wave. And it's a 20-minute treatment session. I love these small units because you can use one or all three hooked together. And the nice thing about it is you can customize it to where you need it. If you're having neck pain, maybe a shoulder issue, I use it a lot on my elbow. It comes with different size straps, and so you can make it as big or as small as you want to based upon your body part. All my clients that are using red light therapy to help control their arthritis pain are very happy with the unit. I'll put a link down below so you can check it out. All right, everyone. Thank you for watching. And remember, strength training and exercise is the cornerstone to manage both osteoarthritis and osteoporosis. Please let me know if you have any questions down below about exercise or red light therapy or how to exercise with both. Thank you for watching. Please share the video with family and friends. Keep exercising, and I'll see you at the next video. Take care.